


in the midst of chaos (there was you)

by fleurting



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-25
Updated: 2017-11-25
Packaged: 2019-02-06 14:56:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12819990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fleurting/pseuds/fleurting
Summary: They’ve both got scars, his are just more visible.A love story in fifty parts.





	in the midst of chaos (there was you)

**Author's Note:**

> About a million years ago (back in 2012?) I signed up for a challenge where you wrote 50 one sentence fics for a fandom/pairing/etc. of your choice over the course of a year. Clearly I failed at that time limit, and sticking to the one sentence rule, but here is what came out of that on and off again five year experiment. I hope it's at least somewhat cohesive/coherent. Enjoy!

**thirty-two.** eye.  
They’ve both got scars, his are just more visible.

 **fourteen.** command.  
She’s every bit as much a soldier as he is.

 **forty-seven.** harm.  
He’s terrified of hurting her, is afraid to make love; afraid his entire being has been tainted and fears that at any moment the beast will claw it’s way out, never to make it’s way back in.

 **thirty-one.** book.  
Victoire has a penchant for Fleur’s voice and Bill can’t blame her; it is softness and charm in every vibration and her accent gives new meaning to words, it’s as if her mouth was made to recite stories (the first one she ever reads to her is _Beauty and the Beast_ ).

 **forty-eight.** precious.  
Nothing compares to the day Victoire is born, all splotchy pink skin and bundles of white blonde curls.

 **thirty.** ghost.  
Fred’s presence still lingers, for months and months on end; she tries to help him, but some days, she feels it too.

 **thirteen.** change.  
His hands linger at the back of her neck as her fingers brush her hair away and he places his calloused hands on the slider, pulling the zipper down the rows of teeth.

 **forty-six.** drive.  
She thinks the baby bump makes her hideous, refuses to see reason, and he tries to convince her, tell her how she’s always beautiful while kissing her neck, but she doesn’t relent and pushes him away.

 **twenty-seven.** hide.  
He contemplates it, covering his scars, secretly flips through pages of _Witch Weekly_ and confides in Ginny, who only laughs and tells Fleur; she berates him and proceeds to press her lips against each and every one.

 **eleven.** blur.  
Sometimes it seems like everything moved too fast, like they did too much growing up in too little amount of time.

 **forty-four.** wall.  
He presses her against the brick of the building, ignoring her complaints about ruining her dress, and kisses her, his large build overshadowing her dainty frame.

 **two.** cool.  
She’s lying on the bed, dressed in nothing but lace underwear and one of his dress shirts, which is opened to so he can see the outline of her breasts, and when the breeze comes through the open window, the small bumps that arise on her skin.

 **forty-three.** god.  
He’s lost his faith, asks how any god could be so cruel as to make a beast out of man; she stops from where she's tending to his wounds and tells him in a strict voice that is reminiscent of his mother, he is making a man out of a beast.

 **forty-five.** naked.  
It takes her months before she allows him to see her face stripped of anything intended to conceal imperfections and when she finally does he cannot see them so she points them out and he drags his tongue over them until she’s forgotten where they were.

 **thirty-seven.** time.  
She’s an easy to read pupil (quill tapping against the mouth when in thought, eyes narrowed when frustrated, lips pursed when confused) and this should allow him to breeze through lesson upon lesson, but instead it makes the tasks even more difficult for he spends more time studying her than teaching.

 **sixteen.** need.  
Everyone assumes their relationship is based on attraction, possibly their shared love of adrenaline and adventure, but no one knows the truth: that the strongest interest they share is the absolute hunger for one another, so intense it’s as if it’s almost primal.

 **six.** gentle.  
He thinks of her often: the strands of her silky hair brushing against his bare chest, the flowing of her skirt in the gentle breeze. The rational part of him knows that there is war and darkness outside his window, but the other part wants to sink into her and never pull out for if he never leaves her side, nothing so horrible as the loss of her can happen.

 **three.** young.  
“We can’t,” he breathes, “You’re too young.” he closes his eyes, thinks of an age difference of seven years. She presses a finger to his mouth and shows him exactly how young she isn't.

 **one.** motion.  
He can hear the sound of the ocean rushing outside, the crashing of the waves. It feels as if he’s keeping the same pace, riding along with them as he slides inside and out of her.

 **twenty-two.** mad.  
“Bill,” she gasps as he pulls her around a corner, out of the goblins' sight, “You are mad.” He grins cheekily, lifts her blouse to where his fingers can feel the soft skin of her waist.

 **thirty-eight.** wash.  
Sometimes he stands in the kitchen, glancing out the vastness of the ocean, and wishes it would wash them all away, wipe up all this death and destruction and start over but then she slips behind him, wraps her bony arms around him and whispers things in her natural tongue that she's said many a time before but that make his heart grow just the same.

 **twenty-five.** shadow.  
Occasionally, when he's in a place so dark not even the yellow of her hair can warm him, it isn't the outline of a boy he sees peering up at him from the pavement but instead, the shadow of a monster, a wolf.

 **twenty-eight.** fortune.  
He’s always been poor, that hasn't changed, but when he looks around the cottage and sees his wife humming idly while she flits about the kitchen, his daughter merrily chasing the owl nearby, he feels like the richest man in the world.

 **forty.** history.  
"And what about you? what's your story?" he asks, gasping against her mouth, not yet fully understanding when she replies “Not the one everyone thinks.”

 **thirty-six.** stop.  
"Oh," he sighs as he feels the sharp edges of her nails sink into the creamy, freckled skin of his of his thigh. "Don’t...stop."

 **forty-nine.** hunger.  
_Merlin_ , he thinks as she pushes into him into the wall, _I’ve missed you_ , even though it's only been a day, even though he shouldn't be feeling this much, this soon. He feels desperate, every part of him aching to touch her, to taste.

 **thirty-nine.** torn.  
Some nights, his darkest, he feels as if his body has been ripped in half, fighting against itself, torn between reaching for his family, for Fleur, the other - the wolf - clawing it’s way towards the moon.

 **fifty.** believe.  
When the Dark Lord is at the height of his power, when the names of her friends are always followed by obituaries, it is only Bill she can allow herself to believe in.

 **twenty-six.** goodbye.  
They are both old enough to know that he has to do as the Order requests, has to leave her, but that doesn’t halt her from grabbing onto him, holding him close to her chest, whispering only a soft “à bientôt,” and not a goodbye.

 **twenty-one.** fool.  
Bill has Victoire bouncing on his lap, pulling faces to earn her little laughs, when Fleur walks by muttering, “Fool,” to which he cheekily replies, “Only for you, love.”

 **seventeen.** vision.  
She takes his breath away as she walks down the aisle, a vision in tulle and lace.

 **twenty-four.** now.  
Bill sighs as he flops down into the armchair in the living room, resting his eyes as his wife takes time they do not have to change her robes for the umpteenth time. His eyes open as she descends down the stairs like a dream. “Now, how do I look?”

 **ten.** learn.  
After his attack, he spends most of his time in his own head, making up things that are untrue, letting his doubts turn into fears, until one day Fleur has had enough, grabs him by the chin and says, “When are you going to learn? There is not anything in this world that could make me unlove you. You have scars? So do I. We will be scarred together.”

 **eight.** thousand.  
She doesn’t immediately say yes, when he asks, and as he balances on one knee, it feels as if his heart is beating a hundred times per minute and doesn’t slow until she says, “Oh, Bill! Of course I will! Oui, oui, a thousand times, yes.”

 **twenty-nine.** safe.  
As much as her skin is soft, she’s made of steel, a personal Gringotts guarding only his heart.

 **eighteen.** attention.  
She captured his attention the moment he laid eyes on her and hasn't lost it since.

 **four.** last.  
His family doesn't think it's going to last, believe it to be simple infatuation and are sure it shall fade with time but he knows better, knows that his love for her will outlast time itself. He’s never been more sure of anything.

 **fifteen.** hold.  
He’s lying there, aching with every breath he takes, sure he's going to die at any second and all he can think of is her, how he just needs to hold her one last time.

 **thirty-three.** never.  
He never imagined himself married, always believed himself to be too much of a free spirit to ever settle down, but as she walks down the aisle towards him he can't imagine how he ever wanted anything but this. 

**five.** wrong.  
Almost everyone looks at her, her beauty, her femininity, and sees weakness. They couldn't be more wrong.

 **forty-one.** power.  
Even she doesn't realize the full extent of power she has over him. He would do anything for her, anything at all, all she would have to do was ask. 

**seven.** one.  
She doesn't know exactly when she realised he was the one she was destined to be with. All she knows is that one day she looked over at him as he slept and realised she could no longer live without him.

 **nineteen.** soul.  
When she met him it was as if everything fell into place, as if a piece of her soul had been missing and was finally home again.

 **twenty-three.** child.  
He thought the day he married her was the happiest day of his life but the day she tells him she's with child outshines it, and then the day Victoire is born, and Fleur agrees with him, is more magnificent than either one.

 **twelve.** wait.  
"Wait," he whispers as she moves to leave his bed, pulling her back to him and burying his lips into her neck, not yet ready to admit he doesn't ever want to let her go.

 **thirty-four.** sing.  
She shows him she's not perfect on their second date, when she sings along to the radio, off-key and two octaves too high, and all it does is make him fall for her even more than he already has.

 **nine.** king.  
He may not have had much in terms of money but he lived as richly as a king. 

**thirty-five.** sudden.  
His family thinks their engagement too sudden, he doesn't think it sudden enough. He’s had a ring in his pocket since day seven.

 **twenty.** picture.  
When they look back on their lives it's a panoramic picture, detailing each of their pasts, and for both of them, all the best and brightest moments, were the ones spent together.

  



End file.
